He looked at her in annoyed surprise when she suddenly smiled. He watched her with an even greater interest than the man gazing from behind the piano. From an escritoire she took a package wrapped in lavender paper. This she placed in the pocket of the coat that he had thrown across a chair.
“What good are cigarettes to me now?” he demanded. “I have told you that unless I have fifteen thousand dollars by noon to-morrow, I am done.”
“When you get to your rooms,” she said, smiling, “open your cigarettes and see if I do not love you.”
Trent admitted this Jules was undeniably handsome now that the dark face was wreathed in smiles. Jules gathered her in his arms.
“My soul,” he whispered, and covered her face with kisses. When he attempted to rise and go to the coat his eyes were staring at, she held him tight.
“I got twenty thousand from him,” she said. “You will find the twenty bills each wrapped in the cigarette papers. I pushed the tobacco out and they fitted in.”
“Wasteful one,” he said in tender reproach and sought again to retrieve his coat.
Unfortunately for the debonair Jules d’Aucquier this was not immediately possible. The click of the little elevator was heard. The two looked at one another in alarm.
“It must be Carr,” she whispered. “Nobody else could possibly use that elevator now. Somebody has told him.” She looked about her in despair. “You must hide. Quick, behind the piano there until I get him away.”
Trent working industriously amid the wreckage of what had been a grand piano looked up with polite surprise at the tall man who flung himself almost at his feet and tried to conceal himself behind part of the instrument.